Here’s a press release from a friend’s project.

EPISODE 1 OF ‘THE VARIANTS’ PREMIERES

Dallas, TX—Zeus Comics Media is proud to announce the premiere of THE VARIANTS, the web comedy series that takes you behind the counter of your local comic book shop.

“Several months, countless hours, and a whole bunch of volunteer work made this possible,” says series co-creator/co-writer Ken Lowery. “Needless to say we’re very proud of the final product.”

Episode 1, “Pilot,” follows the staff of Zeus Comics through a typical new comic day. We meet the cast—enthusiastic store owner Richard, surly bastard Barry, bubbly Keli, fanboy Joe—as they fend off hordes of fans looking to pick up the new hardcover collecting ‘90s icon Jim Leefeld’s work on Team Bloodforce. Joe, of course, wants a copy, and of course, there isn’t a spare one to be found. Wouldn’t you know it? Hilarity ensues.

“”This episode takes the collector mentality to the absurd extreme,” says co-creator/co-writer Richard Neal, who fittingly plays Richard. “Joe’s gotta have it.”

THE VARIANTS’ first season premieres August 5, with new episodes uploaded on the first Wednesday of every month at http://www.thevariants.com. Journalists interested in more information or in setting up interviews can contact Ken Lowery at ken@thevariants.com.

RJ White reviews the Criterion edition of Namor’s THE FANTASTIC FOUR.

The story’s pretty well-known- in the early 1960s, not long after their disfiguring accident and entry into the public eye as the short-lived “science vigilante” group the Fantastic Four (Reed “Mr. Fantastic” Richards, Susan “Invisible Girl” Storm-Richards, Ben “The Thing” Grimm and Johnny “The Human Torch” Storm) fell upon some financial hardship, due to poor investments. Monarch/industrialist/part-time terrorist Prince Namor of Atlantis (sometimes known as the “sub-mariner”) decided to privately fund a film starring the team. Namor even started his own production company to produce the film, but the whole thing turned out to be some sort of elaborate scheme in which he had planned to kill them. Thwarted somehow, he went back into the sea and the film was completed by an uncredited Samuel Fuller.

I thought Ebert’s review of TRANSFORMERS 2 was good until I read this…

From Flicked Off:

In practice, there are a bunch of machines who are mad at other machines and they enter into many encounters where they whirl around, but if you are any kind of normal person, you won’t be able to tell which machine is which, and so it will pretty much look like two or more enormous microwaves with swords violently mating

Links, as I am busy today. I’ll mark the NSFW ones, ok?

Yes, I know that people who follow me on Twitter have seen these. Shut up.

• Happiest People Ever – A misnomer, at best.
  
• Sexy People – My favorite blog ever. This is not at all an exaggeration.
  
• Awkward Family Pictures – I’ve seen a lot of these, but there’s frequently a previously-unearthed gem.
  
• Everything is Terrible- Remixed video footage from the gutters. The movie debuts this weekend. If I were in LA, I’d go to this. (Sometimes NSFW when it comes to language.)
  
• Fuck Yeah, Dr McCoy – What do you think it’s about, sharks? (SFW except for that URL.)
  
• This is Photobomb (Frequently NSFW) – People screwing up other people’s photos.
  
• Grain Edit – The BoingBoing of design blogs, sending you to other new places that can then introduce you to other new places, etc, etc.
  
• Kevin Dart – I discovered Kevin Dart from Grain Edit. I want to see him doing comic covers stat.

GO READ THIS: Scott Morse’s THE SHOGUNAUT

Click now go go go go!

CLICK THIS LINK RIGHT NOW: Paul Pope’s Star Trek Comic

There’s a buncha DVDs on sale at Amazon

Setting aside my enmity towards Amazon’s PR department, this is a pretty amazing sale if you’re willing to dig around a bit.

In the $5 and under bin – Not a really, uh, deep selection, but She Wolves Of The Wasteland is $4, so that’s something.

DVD movies for $5-$8 OK, here’s where it starts getting pretty interesting.  Little Shop Of Horrors, one of two or three musicals I like!  Dr Strangelove! The Breakfast Club!  Mannequin and Mannequin 2: On The Move!  Glory!  The Dark Crystal!  And that’s just on the first page!

$8 to $15 Spider-Man 3!  The first season of Barney Miller!  An Affair To Remember!  Jodorowsky’s El Topo! The Steve Reeves Hercules Collection!

$15-$20 The complete Due South!  The first season of Lexx!  A four-film Shaw Brothers box set!  Seasons of Kids In The Hall and Monty Python’s Flying Circus!

$20-$30 Seasons of Rescue Me, Dawson’s Creek, Remington Steele and Profiler!  A six-film Marilyn Monroe box set!  The complete Poirot!  The Criterion edition of The Complete Mr Arkadin!

Over $30 The complete Emma Peel Avengers for $48!  The complete Homicide: Life On The Street for $117!  Nero Wolfe!  The deluxe collector’s edition of La Dolce Vita!

Dateline: Silver Age is such a good website, you guys.

Hey, Chris Sims finally went and did something with Solomon Stone.

Seriously, he’s been chewing my ear off about this comic since he was actually in his mother’s womb, and I couldn’t be happier for him. You can read it here.

Jon Adams sent me a press release.

With the economy as it is, there’s been little to celebrate lately. Fortunately Jon Adams doesn’t believe in things like the economy, or money, or really anything made out of paper. But he does believe in celebrations, and that’s why he’s throwing a party devoid of paper invitations. Instead, the invitations are just these words on a computer screen. Your computer screen, probably, which is where the party will take place.

Please join us and some other people on computers around the world for a week-long celebration, beginning April 1st. It all happens at citycyclops.com

I’m the sort of special guest that ruins your carpets and empties your liquor cabinet…

…but Chris Mautner and crew asked me to participate in this week’s “What Are You Reading?” column over at Robot 6, where I talk about the new Mark Waid comic for BOOM!, a decade-old book from Alan Moore, and manga about sake among other things, anyway.

A Rough Guide To Webcomics Made By Twitter Users. (Part Two)

Aaaand I looked at some more strips from people who submitted their URLs to my hateful gaze. You may want to also look at Part One. Part Three will be up on Friday hopefully.

Harmless Free Radicals by “Fenmere, The Worm”
I really enjoyed the strips I read from this (a chunk from the early days, and the last 30 or so updates.) The earlier strips have a “very good for a college newspaper” feel and while more frequent updates would really help the flow of the strip since it moved away from the gag format to a longform narrative, there’s clearly a lot of thought put into the characters and the art is very easy on the eyes.

I Can Draw Better Than This by “Fenmere, The Worm”
Another comic by the creator whose name makes my teeth grind like a motherfucker. I Can Draw Better Than This is experimental, sometimes funny, and occasionally a pure distillation of comics. I love the presentation more than the (good, to be sure) comics: it’s drawn on index cards and photographed, which leads to the only complaint I have: the comics should be larger.

I Rule The Night by Kevin Colden
You guys, I thought Colden’s Fishtown was good and showed a lot of promise but this shit is fire. I don’t want to say anything about the plot because, honestly, the initial reveal about the lead is too good to spoil, but the 21 pages on Zuda so far had me chomping at the bit for more, even if he’s working on themes touched on by creators Alan Moore and Rick Veitch among others. Gorgeous and blackly funny, it’s easily the best thing I’ve seen on DC’s webcomic site.

Kitsune Kiki by Samuel and David Thomas
Superbly polished, highly derivative American-made manga.

Nemu Nemu by KimonoKitsy Studios
If you can handle too-cute, baby-talking stuffed animals more than I can, then this manga webcomic is likely made for you. I just do not have that kawaii gene outside of Yotsuba and Hello Kitty, I suppose.

Not Artistically Strong by George Beedham
Truth in advertising, I suppose, but I actually was pretty charmed by Beedham’s very British (there’s enough Doctor Who gags to qualify this strip for the Gallifreyian Medal Of Nerditude,) occasionally very funny look at his life. Autobiocomics are a dime a dozen, particularly on the web, but it’s nice to see someone manage to be both self-deprecating and sure of themselves.

Par for the Core by “Fenmere, The Worm”
We’ll come back when he’s got more than a half-dozen pages up of this interesting-looking comic about parkour.

Requiem by James Roden
It’s a science-fiction comic done using CGI with a backstory that reads like it belongs in an RPG manual. It’s pretty much the platonic ideal of what I’m not interested in, but I can definitely see it having an audience out there among people who masturbate to Kim Stanley-Robinson and David Brin novels while logged into Second Life.  (I’m teasing.  Honest.)

Sam & Lilah by Jim Dougan and Hyeondo Park
A gorgeously-drawn, lushly-colored romance comic that is so damn celebratory that I can’t help but think it’s worth a look, even if my back teeth still ache from the over-the-top cuteness.

Shades by David Berner and Harsho Mohan Chattoraj
This ongoing superhero story feels a lot like an early Warren Ellis comic for Avatar, but without his trademark dialogue. (Speaking of dialogue, though, the writer admits that the latest installment features a near-direct lift from The Dark Knight Returns. I admire that sort of honesty, even if it seemed closer to a tribute than an out-and-out swipe.)

A Rough Guide To Webcomics Made By Twitter Users. (Part One)

So, I asked people on Twitter to give me a shout if they made a webcomic.  Thanks to “retweets” (blergh) by Deb Aoki and a few other people, I got quite a nice batch of responses.  I’m going to divide this up into three parts so it’s a bit more manageable for everyone and hopefully you’ll actually click on all of the links that interest you versus being overwhelmed.

Abandon: First Vampire by Greg Carter and Eliot Dombo
Manga-influenced online graphic novel about a vampire who has adventures while confronting her past.  There’s quite a lot of stabbing in the first bit, so I will probably go back to check out some more.

Alternate Delusions by Tim Volpe
One of those comics that feels very quaint, with the Zentraedi-like bulk of poorly-drawn, geek-centric strips like User Friendly looming over it menacingly.

Children of the Tiger by Melissa Stone
From the site’s “about” page: “It is a webcomic by Melissa Stone that is based on her novelette of the same name. It will be four parts in length.” That translates to “Not for Kevin, but if you like that sort of thing, you can do much, much worse.”

Cold Iron Badge by Stephen Geigen-Miller and Patrick Heinicke
A fantasy-world police procedural.  Think Life On Mars meets Lars Brown’s NorthWorld.  I imagine I’m in the minority when I say I like the earlier look of the strip compared to the more manga-influenced style being used right now, but I do like what I’ve seen of the characters and their world.

Construction Paper Angst by Topher McCulloch
It’s a semi-auto-bio-comic that’s been recently revived.  Points for the clever use of construction paper, however there are penalties for the sporadic nature of updates and impossible-to-decipher writing that surely seemed funny to the author at the time.  We’ll call it a wash.

Dark Side of the Horse by Samson
The wordless strips here really, really sing and I love the two-tone art.  It feels very much like a classic strip that’s been unearthed, and that’s a good thing.

Dragon’s Fall by William Alexander Righetti and Irene Pitcairn
This hasn’t started yet, but the people involved mentioned it anyway.  So, you know.  There will be something there soon.  The “cover” posted has nice coloring.

El Gorgo! by Mike McGee and Tamas Jakab
We’ve been over this before.  This is better than you deserve.

Entry Level Hipster Garbage by Max Huffman and Ethan (Who Has No Last Name Listed)
When you go to the site, you get confronted with some page that is like “The series has launched,” but go and click on “First Comic” or “Latest Comic” and you’ll see that the title does a good job of explaining it.  A lot of the jokes here seem a bit forced, but I really like Huffman’s facial expressions and how he conveys action in his sketchy style.  It’s nice to see a comic that isn’t rendered to the nth degree.

Fera by David Shirley
“Follow the adventures of this rag tag group as they travel the lost planet of Mu.”  Imagine my disappointment that this is not about the KLF having said adventures.  Not my cup of tea at all.

Finn-Strip by Jarmo
I suspect I would appreciate the near-sociopathic pride in being Finnish if I were, in fact, Finnish.  I do like the art in some strips much more than others.

George by John Norton
It’s interesting that I read a big swath of a comic with the exact style of face that I hate (see also: User Friendly) and jokes that were pretty hackish without really feeling like I was wasting my time.  Maybe it was the Two And A Half Men effect, where things are moving along just enough to keep you engaged even if you know there’s better out there.

Hamstah Powah by Samuel Boyd
It’s about hamsters having crazy adventures with “jokes” that make no sense.  I’m sure it’s wildly popular with a certain sort of person.

Well, at least someone thinks I was on the right track.

Variety‘s review of Watchmen:

Yet the movie is ultimately undone by its own reverence; there’s simply no room for these characters and stories to breathe of their own accord, and even the most fastidiously replicated scenes can feel glib and truncated. As “Watchmen” lurches toward its apocalyptic (and slightly altered) finale, something happens that didn’t happen in the novel: Wavering in tone between seriousness and camp, and absent the cerebral tone that gave weight to some of the book’s headier ideas, the film seems to yield to the very superhero cliches it purports to subvert.

Here’s a site that sells Star Wars movie posters.

If anyone has a couple grand they can loan me, I have my eyes on a few of these.

Recommended: Registered Weapon

I’d recommend starting at the beginning.  Yes, there really is a a cash register police detective.  No, they are not on drugs.

(OK, maybe they’re on drugs.  I shouldn’t really speak for them.)

This is a fantastic deal.

The complete six-thousand DVD set for The Wire is $82 on Amazon today. That’s right. $82. Buy two and keep one as an emergency backup in case you need a McNulty fix in your life after the apocalypse.

Links! They are the lazy blogger who is busy working on something else’s best friend!

• Matt Maxwell’s Strangeways has moved to Robot 6 at Comic Book Resources.
  
• Kyle Baker is going to do a biography of Barack Obama.
  
• If you have 15 minutes, please fill out this grammar survey to help improve English instruction. If you know me, you know what sort of…let’s just say National Socialist I am for a lot of the grammatical arts.
  
• And the best is last: Lance and Carla are out of the hospital. She’s been on Twitter a bit lately and I’m pretty sure he’s already wrestling bears, so, you know, they’ll be up to spec quickly. You should still pay attention to those auctions, though because I’m pretty sure they’ll need more shekels.

Read This: John Rogers does math.

John Rogers beats the shit out of conservative commentators again, and I laugh and laugh and applaud and applaud. He’s one of my favorite writing-type people for a reason:

For chrissake, there’s even one woman, the sum total of her post was how Hollywood types don’t worry about taxes because we incorporate and then laugh at the Red State rubes who pay taxes. Because S-corps don’t exist outside the 90210 zip code, as you well know. But Hollywood is laughing at you, America!

Chekov Manga: The Adventures of Pavel Chekov